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Allyn Vine's bean cans set up on Bikini Atoll to measure wave height.

Allyn Vine's bean cans set up on Bikini Atoll to measure wave height.
Allyn Vine's bean cans set up on Bikini Atoll to measure wave height.
Allyn Vine's bean cans set up on Bikini Atoll to measure wave height.
Allyn Vine's bean cans set up on Bikini Atoll to measure wave height.
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Allyn Vine's bean cans set up on Bikini Atoll to measure wave height.
Still Image
01/01/1946
archives/vine-a13.tif
Date is approximate.
Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 55, No. 1, Pg. 24:
To monitor wave heights on Bikini Atoll during Operation Crossroads in 1946, WHOI scientist Allyn Vine devised a crude but effective solution: He nailed empty tin cans to palm trees at various heights.
Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 52, No. 2, Pg. 35:
To monitor how high waves generated by an underwater nuclear explosion would reach on nearby islands, WHOI scientist Allyn Vine devised cheap but effective devices: He nailed empty tin cans to palm trees at various heights.
Image Of the Day caption:
In the late 1940s, WHOI scientists helped document the impacts of U.S. nuclear weapons tests conducted in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 during Operation Crossroads. To measure surge levels they anticipated would hit Bikini and Enewetok Atolls from the underwater nuclear explosions, the scientists came up with an inexpensive and simple approach: They nailed empty tin cans to palm trees at various heights. Today, scientists at WHOI continue to investigate the impacts of the bomb tests by studying lingering radioactivity throughout the lagoons and beaches of the atolls.
Allyn Vine's bean cans attached to a palm tree to measure wave height in meters before the nuclear detonation.
Photo courtesy of WHOI Archives
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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